New Music Fridays: Festicket Staff Picks

John Bell

19 Apr 2019

First Published 19 Apr 2019

Happy Bank Holiday Friday! It's a definitely been a Good Friday for new music, as our playlist this week shows. Included below are new releases from Beyonce, Peggy Gou, Fat White Family and, yes, Madonna.

Find the playlist below and enjoy with a glass of Pimms as you welcome in the Easter Bank Holiday weekend.

Fat White Family – Serf's Up

Undertaking a ‘slick transformation’ of sorts having kicked unsavoury habits, Fat White Family have found a new source of inspiration; the issues of finding your feet in a new world of sobriety, rather than struggling to cope with the world, whilst on drugs. “The air here is so fresh and clean” declares wiry frontman Lias Saoudi on ‘Tastes Good With The Money’, an almost lamentable self-realisation of success and soberness. A scenario they’re not known to be familiar with.

The unhinged energy that saw the previous Peckham-squatters thrust into the affections of many is still present, rather brewing beneath the facade of abstinence as opposed to drooping out of the baggy jeans of yesteryear. Dingy-disco (‘Feet’) and Tom Waits-esque spooks (‘When I Leave’) occupy their sonic sensibilities on Serf’s Up, registers a clear-minded progression, but a destination they’re uncertainly staggering towards. TC

Deeb – Flowers

In a quest to make a themed playlist for a dinner party I’m attending this weekend – because I’m not just a sophisticated young professional, but also a pathetic nerd with too much time on my hands who gets excited at any opportunity to make a new playlist – I stumbled across this EP from someone I’d never heard of before, a producer by the name of Deeb.

Entitled Flowers, and ostensibly built around a floral theme, it clocks it at just 13 minutes and in that time you basically don’t really realise you’re listening to it, such is the chilled, unintrusive nature of the instrumental hip/trip hop production.

Essentially, it sounds exactly like one of those ‘lo-fi hip hop to relax/study to’ playlists that YouTube seemingly always suggests in the sidebar. You know, the ones with the anime girl sitting at her desk, cat beside her on the windowsill while she works. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a genuine pleasure to listen to – preferably if you’re looking to relax/study. JK

Peggy Gou – Moment

From the fact that her face seems to be, well, everywhere, Berlin-based Korean DJ, producer, model and fashion designer Peggy Gou seems to be one of the most artists in demand at the moment. Though there's an undeniable credibility about her with her strong visual aesthetic, her new EP Moment, out today, rightfully reminds us that it's music that drives this Gou-mania.

A two-part release made up of 'Starry Night', a piano-lead house anthem that dropped last month, and the hypnotising single 'Han Pan' with an almost Afrobeat vibe at its core, this little teaser from the beloved polymath is guaranteed many late night plays this bank holiday. JB